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Trump’s Rise is America’s Descent

Being the vulgar pragmatist, I often do what I can to see things beyond the typical buzzwords thrown around on social media, especially when talking about race. Too many times, “racism” and “privilege” are used as silencers of dissent in progressive circles, much like “repentance” and “sin nature” are among evangelicals.

What has resulted from this — at least for me, anyway — is the meaning of these words and terms get lost. I’ve said many times that when everything is “racism”, be it a silly “microaggression”, an ill-timed tweet or Facebook post, or even simple disagreement — NOTHING is racism. The “honest conversation” progressives claim they wish to have very quickly turn into long, incoherent diatribes lacking of substance.

For this reason, and for other personal matters I’ll get into in a later piece, I have largely avoided the 2016 election cycle. On the left, it’s been very interesting to watch from a distance as high and holy figures within “the conversation” on race such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, bell hooks, Killer Mike, Shaun King and others have planted their flag with Sen. Bernie Sanders, ironically placing their faith in an old white man with promises of revolution, and the tearing down of the successes of the Obama presidency.

But then, there’s the Right, limping into 2016 already battered and bruised by the backfiring of all their stonewalling of President Obama’s agenda — and the advancement of most of it despite them. Having very little momentum going in their favor, their initial mile-wide, ankle-deep list of candidates seemed tailor-made for a Democratic landslide in the general election.

But with the advent of Donald Trump, they just might have guaranteed a 50-state blowout.

There are no consequences for protesters anymore in the United States, Donald Trump said Friday during a raucous rally in St. Louis where the interruptions were frequent and the candidate appeared more assertive than ever in denouncing them.

“Part of the problem and part of the reason it takes so long [to kick them out] is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore,” Trump said during a speech at the Peabody Opera House — around 12 miles from Ferguson, Mo., the site of racially charged mass protests in 2014.

“There used to be consequences. There are none anymore,” Trump said. “These people are so bad for our country. You have no idea folks, you have no idea.”

Donald Trump is without question the most vulgar, unqualified, undignified; horrid candidate to ever run for the office of the President. He is the end result of the Right-wing base’s anger and fear of a changing, more diverse country; not to mention the blinding rage at being thwarted often by a man who upset two hundred-plus years of white males running the country. To the Right’s base, Trump is their savior; one unafraid of “political correctness”, offering up a clear agenda of division and all-out hatred.

And then there’s this.

The organized group of people, many of them thugs, who shut down our First Amendment rights in Chicago, have totally energized America!

Trump’s rise in this election season was the one thing to rouse me out of my writing exile. I have to hand it to him for that. But with Black people being assaulted at Trump rallies, and his open courting of such violence, it is truly only a matter of time before something worse happens.